listening comprehension

[Maria]

Hey everybody,

I was watching a TV show just the other day and the story was about crime. Two questions been raised (for me).

1. The police were talking about paw prints and not finger prints, so here is my question I didn't find anything in dictionaries but "Pfotenspuren"? However, this case was dealing with murder and victims on a crime scene and had nothing to do with animals. I was wondering whether it maybe refered to the whole hand print and not the fingers exactly? If it does then why paw prints?

2. A character in this story was saying something like "That's (a?) random." I'm not quite sure about the accurate phrase anyway, the relevance went according to "what kind of coincident". And that's the point. If I look up the german word Zufall, thousands of possibilities and translations are indicated. I'm totally confused. So which words are in common parlance? And how do I recognize the right situation and deduce the proper word for that?

It would be great if anybody could help me?
I welcome each of you to revise my trying to put these questions in english.

PS:
Just a small and a very last question at the end: "I'm good./We're good." stands for "I'm/we're fine / ok."?

Thank you.

[tiorthan]

You sure they weren't talking about palm prints?

[Maria]

You sure they weren't talking about palm prints?

Dammit! You're right. I put extra my earphones on in order to be able to listen carefully and it sounded like paw absolutely, I was so sure but it's definitely palm of course. Thanks for you're tip.

[Duckduck (Contributor)]

2. A character in this story was saying something like "That's at random."

http://www.dict.cc/?s=at+random

I'm not quite sure about the accurate phrase anyway, it was supposed to mean something like "what a coincidence". And that's the point. When I look up the German word "Zufall", thousands of possibilities and translations are indicated. I'm totally confused. So which words are in common parlance? And how do I recognize the right situation and deduce/pick the proper word for that?

Hi Maria,
na, das hilft doch wieder nichts: da musst Du lesen, lesen, lesen!
Mit der Zeit und nach vielen, vielen englischen Büchern entwickelst Du eine Art Vokabel-Verwendungs-Muskel und der hilft Dir, in der richtigen Situation das angemessene Wort zu verwenden (wenn auch nicht immer ganz zuverlässig, aber hey!!!). Regeln bezüglich der Anwendung helfen Dir da nicht, das ist eben auch Sprachgefühl. Und jenes ist zum Teil "angeboren" aber eben auch trainierbar.

Bleibe dran, ich finde Deinen Text doch nun wirklich schon total gut ausgedrückt!!!

Grüße
Duckduck

[Maria]

Danke fürs Feedback, das hilft mir sehr.

Lg